Can't install anything via apt-get - openjdk errors

Question

I have become unable to install anything on my Ubuntu 14.04 box. When I try to, I get the following error:

No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
                                                                                                          dpkg: error processing package openjdk-7-jre-headless:amd64 (--configure):
 cannot compute MD5 hash for file '/etc/java-7-openjdk/logging.properties': failed to read (Input/output error)
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of default-jre-headless:
 default-jre-headless depends on openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7~u3-2.1.1); however:
  Package openjdk-7-jre-headless:amd64 is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package default-jre-headless (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 openjdk-7-jre-headless:amd64
 default-jre-headless
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I get similar errors when I try any one of the following commands:

sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-sqlalchemy
sudo apt-get install vlc browser-plugin-vlc

Any ideas why and/or how to fix?

Solution

Fixed with the following two lines!

sudo apt-get purge openjdk-7-jre-headless
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless

Don't totally understand why... but oh well!

EDIT - this broke some other packages having something to do with me only installing the headless version.

Fixed with this:

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre